Mormons). There were four major reasons that accurate and complete genealogies were so critical to the ancient Jews. And as you’ll see in this chapter, two such genealogies were important to the story of Jesus’ birth. First, ancestry determined one’s claim on land, based on the original tribal allocation of the land of Palestine. When the Israelites first settled in the Promised Land, God divided it into parcels for each tribe (Num. 26:52–56). Second, ancestry determined claims to the right of inheritance.